June 16, 2005

Today's question: How many different reasons do people give for why we are in Iraq? Everyone has a theory, but no one can really tell you why we went to war. And if different people cite different reasons, isn't that proof that no one knows THE reason? (The Bush Administration will give you a number of reasons, depending on the day of the week.)

Barney Frank just made the point that it's pretty impossible to end something when you didn't have a good reason to start it in the first place. It's hard to have an exit strategy when you don't know why you're there and what you hope to accomplish. [. . .] We've had multiple and shifting justifications from the players, but justifcations were just excuses and marketing pitches, not reasons.

I understand that many of us as individuals believe that we know why the administration took us to war. I have my pet theories. But the fact that these answers differ proves my point. The official rationale is clearly false and there is no consensus on the real rationale. This is absurd. We live in tyhe United States of America, not the Soviet Union circa 1956 or Nazi Germany circa 1938. It is, are I say it, unamerican for the "greatest country in the worlod" to invade and occupy another country for reasons that are not crystal clear.

But what was the White House after? Why did they do it? We have plenty of evidence that not only were the specific claims the administration made about WMD false (often knowingly so), but also that all of this was basically irrelevant to their actual thinking about why we should go to war.

But what were they thinking? Lowballing the likely costs of war to build public support makes sense in a cynical-scumbag kind of way, but how is it that these lowballs seem to have become the actual basis for real-world policy? Nobody knows.

So ... why are we in Iraq? Why are Americans dying in Iraq? Does another soldier die tomorrow so the Shiites have an extra seat in the Iraqi Parliament? is that what they signed up for? Is that "defending America?"

I mean, sure, we are there now because we can't get out. Bush won't allow the UN to take over because that would upset the funders of the think tanks, and won't put enough forces in to bring security because that would cause The Party to lose votes... But why did we start this?

Here is what I want to say today: Everyone understands that we are going to war for other reasons than those stated by the Bush administration. Everyone! [. . .] Those supporting this war also understand that there is another, hidden agenda. But like so much of the right-wing agenda, they understand that the public face must be separated from the real agenda. They understand and agree that the public must be deceived. They wink and nod, and it is understood by all.

One thing I want to comment on. I talked to a lot of people. Everyone has a theory about why we are in Iraq. Some talk about Bush being swayed by neo-cons who control what he hears. Some talk about oil. Others about religious agendas like trying to start the apocalypse because the Evangelicals want to ascend to Heaven as the rest of us perish in a total war. Etc.

My comment is that WE DO NOT KNOW why we are in Iraq, and the reasons put forth by the Republicans are obviously bogus. They laid down a smokescreen, told a bunch of lies, whipped us up into a frenzy of fear and loathing, and got their war on. But no one accepts their reasons for war, and no one understands why we REALLY went to war. So we are left with rumors, conspiracy theories, people trying to piece together logic out of whispers of supposed information from possibly trusted sources... My point being that in a Democracy WE were supposed to decide after digesting all available information, with our government serving us by making that information available so we can be informed in our decision process, and the Congress was supposed to "declare war" only in response to the gravest of emergencies. But this time we were led to war, tricked into it, lied to, and manipulated by people who are masters of marketing but apparently void of basic humanity. But why? All we have to go on is rumor and speculation.

WAR. WAR. My God, we started a WAR! WAR IS THE WORST THING IN THE WORLD and we are at war, and we started it. Yes WE. You and me, our country, we started a war, and now we are starting to see it grow. We are seeing images of soldiers urinating on prisoners with hoods over their heads. We are seeing images of children burned to death, arms missing, mosques exploding, bombs ending lives, coffins returning home...

And worse, we did this while we were already occupied with Afghanistan, with finding the people who attacked us on 9/11, and eliminating their ability to attack us again. We took away from that effort to make this other war.

And NO ONE can really tell us why. THIS is what we have become.

Why are we there?

Posted by Dave Johnson at June 16, 2005 2:27 PM

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Comments

I'd answer that, but my answer would be one of many.

By the way THE question of the day was also asked - more than once - in a basement hearing on the Downing Street Memo. CSPAN2 will broadcast that hearing tomorrow night at 8PM. I watched it on CSPAN3 live whle Wolf Blitzer (muted) was Breaking the News by ignoring it. This hearing should be recorded and passed around.

Turn all the reconstruction projects over to IRAQIS. No multinational corporations at all.

Then Iraqis are working putting their lives together and have a lot less time and energy to blow each other up.

The Multi national corporations have been suckling far too long anyway and may be instigating part of the chaos to milk us for more.

Before the war started, India (India Economic Polict Institute-I think)ran an Iraq war special edition. They said the war was a military solution for an economic problem and they predicted it would fail.

I guess concluding that the reasons they gave us to go to war are bogus is the first step to uncovering the reason we went to war. I think we should remember that we had a country here that had been prepared for invasion for 12 years through crippling sanctions and routine north and south bombings, not to mention inspections to dismantle the countries weapons program that turned out to be very successful. Iraq was at a critical juncture, and Saddam was close to being declared no danger by the UN then let off the hook. Meanwhile plans existed for years to use this opportunity to secure our interests in the Middle East. The Project for the New American Century think tank had plans that Bush has since implemented to the letter, using Iraq as the first step to making us the Pax Americana empire in the 21st Century while we're still the world's only super power. Military interests are no longer centered between East and West Europe and its understood that we need to relocate our military interests in the middle east. Aside from the above reasons, there is of course domination of oil interests in these last days of profitable oil production. Speaking of profitable production, Haliburton and Oil companies are breaking profit records thanks to Iraq, and they say follow the money. The plan seems to be more difficult than first anticipated and we've made mistakes that have all but lost this war for us such as weapons stashes left unguarded and looted for the insurgency, firing the Iraqi army leaving them with no other job but insurgency, employing multinational corporations to fail in reconstruction while the Iraqis that have even done it before in record time are left unemployed, illegal changes in the Iraqi laws to dismantle their socialist infrastructure, and the list goes on to fill volumes. Its as if we are more busy creating and arming our adversary then we are in fighting them. This war, which started with 19 thugs with box cutters seems to be orchistrating into a WWIII-worthy clash of religious civilizations. If world domination proves impossible there may be an alternative plan explaining why Bush continues to act like everything's going according to plan. Win or loose greedy corporations stand to make big money off this war to include the Bush family oil and bomb business. America is currently in a trap very similar to the trap set by the same players to bring down the Soviet empire. A bankrupt demoralized America would fit rather comfortably in a Corporate Fascist New World Order. I hope this shed some light on this question, but I don't think the question can be adequately answered with less than a books worth of writing.